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Anyone who’s caught some of the news in the last day probably heard the "scandal" that has broken regarding the book "A Million Little Pieces" by James Frey.  It seems to be everywhere.  I just caught the tale end of his interview on Larry King tonight after Lost to see what he had to say.  Well this whole issue is rather irritating to me.  I’m in the middle of reading it and now everyone is calling into question the validity of the book.  I started it last week and am about 1/3 of the way through the book.  Corina suggested the book to me, as it was the book she had read for the book club she and a couple of friends started.  I started reading it without any preconcieved notions about it and was quite enjoying it.  I was aware it was an Oprah’s Book Club selection, mainly because of the sticker on the cover.  I didn’t know it was the top selling book for the last 15 weeks.  I didn’t know I was reading the trendy book du jour.  I just read it for the sake of having something to read on my breaks at work without any expectation, having never heard of it before.  I only read it about half an hour a day, so it makes for slow progress.  Then all this controversy about the facts involved in the book pops up.  Part of the books charm is the fact that there is some genuinely messed up shite going on and you know it actually happened.  Calling into question the validity of some of these experiences really ruins the read.  I hope it doesn’t entirely ruin the rest of the book for me.

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Finally my family is coming around on the whole online Christmas list thing I did. A couple weeks ago I mentioned about how previous attempts to use an online Christmas list with my family to aid their shopping had failed. Well it seems it might not be falling on deaf ears this year. After being somewhat hostile to the idea, Corina has come around and created a list of her own on MyGiftList, as well as my sister. My Mom has suggested that everyone do it to make it easy to know what gifts to get. I’m so pleased. Now my previous 2 Christmas’ fight for technology doesn’t seem in vain. It’s a moral victory for the internet enabled generation.

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Back when I used to have and go to parties frequently my friend Les once had this totally brutal party. My group of friends used to have a great rep for having kick ass parties, so every one was very well attended. Except this one. Les decided he would try and throw a party the day of, so he told a bunch of people at school and hoped everyone would show. Well that wasn’t quite the case. Hardly anyone showed up and the party was just plain terrible, so Chance and I decided to spice things up. I phoned in a noise complaint on the very lame party we were attending. Then we told everyone at the party(aside from Les) and made a point of making as much noise as possible outside his house, just to make sure the cops would come. We were screaming and yelling and Chance managed to get the keys to the riding lawnmower and was doing doughnuts on the lawn at 1am. The police eventually showed up to this terrible party and talked to Les(who was used to talking to the cops during parties given how many parties he used to have) and they just said keep it down and went on their way. Les comes back into the house and proceeds to gloat to everyone about how it wasn’t that bad of a party if the police showed up. Everyone had a good laugh at that.

My costume is almost complete. I ordered an accessory from eBay and am waiting for that one to come in. They assured Halloween delivery, so it should be here given it’s being shipped from Montreal. I can’t wait to try the whole get-up on. I’ll be sure to post pictures afterwards to see the awesomeness.

Does anyone remember the old show "Téléfrançais" they used to show in elementary school? That show was the cats pyjamas! I had to have watched that series numerous times while going through school. I went to frech immersion school from kindergarten to grade 3, so I watched it then. Then from grades 4-6 I went to an English school, and of course given they would obviously be behind in the level of French they taught, I watched it again, so the show was pretty ingrained in me. I want to find a song from that show that was performed by "Les Squelettes" called "C’est L’Halloween". I can find the theme song to the show, but not that song. Corina and I were singing it in the car last week, but i can’t seem to find a copy of it online.

Updated 10/22/07 A reader posted a link in my comments to a YouTube version of C’est L’Halloween by Matt Maxwell, so here it is

So with that sorted Corina and I made it a day in Simcoe. We did some shopping downtown, picking up a few necessities, like Tang and cookies. In our travels we found this awesome little market that had a bit of everything. Given we were in Simcoe on a nice, sunny day, I thought we should feed the ducks. Simcoe has a really cool pond in the centre of town that has tonnes of canadian geese and ducks, so it’s quite amusing way to kill some time. We picked up a loaf of bread and some bevvies and went to the park. I got a bunch of pictures of ducks(I’ll post some when I get home) and some videos of a goose turf war, it was quite fun. When we finished up there we went back downtown to a place I had spied earlier for lunch called Carey’s. It was a nice little pub/bar with an open air front. Given we’re probably going to be running short on sunny weather soon, it was great to enjoy eating outside for one of the last times this year.

Saturday evening we had plans to go bowling for Dan’s birthday, so we headed over to his place beforehand for drinks and video games. Dan beat me at NHL 2K6, which I got last week. To show how much distain I have for the Toronto Maple Leafs, I bought the US version of the game with Marty Turco of the Dallas Stars on the cover instead of Leaf captain Mats Sundin. We then played a 4 player round of Tiger Woods, which Dan also won, oddly. Dan is always good for having weird and wonderful beers on hand, and yesterday was no exception. I had one from Austria, then another from South Africa, both of which were quite good. We then made our way to the bowling alley. I was a bit worried about my knee and had that confirmed the first ball I threw. I couldn’t do my regular throw, so for the evening I pretty much just walked up to the line and hucked the thing from my hip. Luckily we were playing 5 pin, so it wasn’t that big of a deal. I think everyone had a good time, especially during the third game when we just messed around, doing granny, backwards granny, eyes closed and windmill shots each round.

All in all it was a crazy busy day, but I got alot done. I even managed to run cable to the bedroom finally, so now we have 2 tvs hooked up with cable in the apartment, much to the joy of Corina.

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